


Crossing the World, as Friends do the Seas

by 7iris



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: I Saw Three Ships, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-06
Updated: 2009-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-06 10:29:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/7iris/pseuds/7iris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every time, beneath the pain, he felt Voldemort's power tapping at his defenses, trying to crack his mind open and dig out his secrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crossing the World, as Friends do the Seas

**Author's Note:**

> For xtine in the 2008 I Saw Three Ships Exchange, for the prompt "mental torture."

Voldemort sunk his fingers into Severus's chest and folded his ribcage open like a book.

It was agony, and he would have screamed, but his lungs would not obey him.

Voldemort leaned over him, eyes full of an awful, tender rage. He reached out to press one long finger against Severus's fluttering heart, and whispered, "Let me in."

Severus woke up.

He was in his borrowed room at Grimmauld Place. His breath rasped in his throat and the Mark on his arm ached, dull and nauseous, a counterpoint to the fading sting of a slap on his cheek. Remus half-knelt on the bed beside him, frowning.

"It's getting worse, isn't it?" Remus asked.

Severus huffed out a breath and did not dignify that remark with a reply.

"Do you think he suspects something?"

"No. Or no more so than usual. It is only a tantrum, like a child with a broken toy. Losing the prophecy at the Ministry—" Even in the dark, he could see Remus flinch at that. "He vents his anger on those closest to him. Or connected to him."

Remus looked down, and Severus realized he had curled a hand protectively over the Mark on his arm. It was an effort not to move, not to disavow the weakness.

"His reasons won't matter if he breaks through your Occlumency—"

"He won't," Severus said sharply, with more conviction than he felt.

Remus raised both eyebrows, but he said nothing further.

**::**

He dreamed of being eviscerated, burned at the stake, flayed alive, crushed and swallowed by an enormous serpent with Voldemort's eyes. Every time, beneath the pain, he felt Voldemort's power tapping at his defenses, trying to crack his mind open and dig out his secrets. There was no greater purpose behind it, other than Severus's suffering and humiliation, but the dreams left him exhausted and ill in the morning.

**::**

He stood in a forest, under a full moon.

A werewolf crouched in front of him, huge and snarling and ruby-eyed, its monstrous form half-memory, half-nightmare. It gathered itself as if to leap, and Severus turned and fled.

The trees snatched at his robes as he ran. His breath sobbed in his chest and his legs burned, and always behind him he could hear the werewolf howling.

The ground rose up beneath him and he fell. The shock of it knocked his breath loose. He dug his hands into the cold, damp earth. It felt _real_, and a sudden flash of anger pushed the devouring terror back. It wasn't real, this was his mind, and if he had no power or will here, then he did not deserve to be called a wizard.

Severus stood. The creature had to be close now; he thought he could hear its panting, smell its wet fur and carrion breath, but he did not look back. He reached out and _pushed_ at the forest around him. It resisted, but beneath his will, it wavered and then parted like curtains.

He stepped forward, and the forest dissolved behind him. He was standing in a luminous haze of pearl-gray, empty and featureless, no sound or smell or color. He took another step forward, and a figure appeared.

Perhaps it was because of the memories the werewolf brought back, but the figure resolved itself into Sirius Black. He looked younger than Severus remembered, as though the toll Azkaban had taken on him had been erased. Severus frowned.

"Snape," he said. "Go back."

Severus felt a chill at the thought of returning to those woods and the creature that hunted him there. "No."

Black rolled his eyes. "Well, then at least wake up, you greasy git!" he shouted, and Severus did.

**::**

The next time he dreamed, he was tied down, as though Voldemort did not wish him to flee again. But that did not matter. This body, and the manacles that bound him were no more real than the forest had been.

He ignored the pain. This time, instead of trying clumsily to break the illusion, he turned in on himself, forcing his mind away from the dreamscape Voldemort had created and leaving it behind, finding first an agonizing blackness, and then the soft, gentle grayness.

To his consternation, Black was there again.

"Hot pokers, eh?" Black said. "Always a classic."

At his words, Severus felt a faint echo of the pain Voldemort had conjured for him and smelled the lingering stink of burnt flesh.

"Aren't you going to ask what I'm doing here?" Black asked. "Or where exactly here is?"

"I assume you are a figment of my imagination, since you are too subtle a torment for Voldemort to use."

"So you're not at all curious as to why your subconscious created me out of thin air, rather than someone you might actually want to see? And made me far better looking than I was in life?" Black smirked at him.

"Well, I could hardly imagine you uglier than you were in life. Even I have my limits." His Mark throbbed, as though Voldemort knew he had slipped away. Severus took another step forward, and Black stopped smiling.

"Listen, Snape, you can't come any further. I'm real, this isn't your imagination."

Severus frowned. "You're a ghost?"

"No, I'm _me_. This is—you've pushed your mind too far, you're starting to move into Death. If you try to keep going, you'll die."

"And you're here to save me?" All of his doubt was audible in that question.

"Yes." Black sighed when Severus remained silent. "You can go back, now, it's safe."

Severus hesitated, but his arm no longer hurt. He stepped back, keeping his eyes on Black's grave face. The grayness faded, until he was in complete darkness, and then in deep, true sleep.

**::**

"I'll prove it to you," Black said the next time. "I'll tell you something only Remus and I would know, and then you can ask him about it."

Severus shrugged. "If you insist."

Black grinned. "The first time I sucked Remus off—"

"Do grow up," Severus snapped with a withering glare. "I have no desire to learn the sordid details of your love life."

"But the question is, if I'm not real, why would your subconscious want to tell you about those sordid details?"

"Because I expect you to be a boorish, immature twit."

Black's grin got wider, but he let the joke go. "One of the first times I turned into Padfoot, James had a box of chocolate frogs, and he let me chase them around the forest. I ate almost the whole box before Remus showed up. Remus was furious, because chocolate is poisonous to dogs, and he didn't know what it would do to me. But they were both scared to go to the infirmary, because we weren't supposed to be practicing that kind of magic, so Remus gave me a Puking Pastille. I sicked everything up and was fine."

"I suppose you then ate your own vomit," Severus sniffed.

"I tried, but Remus wouldn't let me," Black said cheerily. "I was a dog after all."

"Hmmmph. If you are real, why are you bothering me? Why not Lupin or Potter?"

"I see Remus, every so often, at the full moon, when he changes. I don't know if he remembers that," Black said. "But they're not bloody great fools trying to separate their minds from their bodies and walk into the Undiscovered Country."

"And you...are trying to stop me from accidentally killing myself?"

"I know you're doing your best to protect Harry, and he needs all the help he can get." Black laughed a little at the face Severus made.

"I did not expect you to be so gracious," Severus admitted.

"Death makes things...clearer," Black said. "It's easier to think without your brain. You should go back now."

**::**

Remus made a face after he drank the Wolfsbane, as he always did. "I still can't believe anything that tastes that vile is not poisonous."

"Drat. You have discovered my cunning plan," Severus said solemnly.

Remus snorted. He tapped the goblet with his wand and it began scrubbing itself clean.

"I have always wondered," Severus said carefully. "I know werewolves are sensitive to different substances than humans, but what about Animagi? What happened when Black ate all those chocolate frogs?"

"Nothing," Remus said, and he was smiling at the memory. "I shoved a Puking Pastille down his throat and he vomited all over James and me. Truly disgusting. The looks on their faces, and those last three partially digested frogs trying to hop into James's shoe—" He stopped, and the smile dropped off his face. "But I don't think any of us ever told anyone about that. And you weren't spying on us, I would have smelled you."

"Sirius Black appeared to me in a dream and told me that story as proof of his identity, as something only you and he would know."

Remus went perfectly still. Finally, he said, "Sirius could have told Harry, and you could have read it from him during your Occlumency lessons."

"And fabricated this tale—"

"Read it from him without realizing." Remus pressed his lips together. "It's only proof if it's something he would not have told Harry."

Severus sighed. "He did offer to pass on a few, ah, intimate details."

Remus nodded jerkily. "Yes. That." At Severus's pained expression, he said, "Don't you want to know for certain?"

Unfortunately, he rather did.

**::**

Voldemort did not come to him in his dreams that night. Instead, he dreamed of ordinary things, chasing a kettle through the Great Hall and tiny purple mice dancing a jig. When he tried to push those images aside, the dreams dissolved and he woke up.

**::**

When he brought Remus his third dose, he said, "He was practicing the Animagus transformation with you, in the Room of Requirement. He says you nearly put his eye out that first time."

Remus's expression wobbled between grief and laughter.

"He assured me you both improved with practice, however."

"Why—How is this possible?"

"The dreams, you know—He says that when I try to escape them, I pass too close to Death, close enough that we may meet."

Remus gave him a sudden sharp look. "You didn't tell me they were so bad."

Severus waved it off. "He says that sometimes, during the full moon, he has spoken to you as well."

"Oh," Remus said very softly, "oh, I had thought I was dreaming," and Severus had to look away from the expression on his face.

**::**

It seemed like it should have changed something, but in the grand scheme of things, it did not. School started again, a new year of forcing priceless knowledge into stubborn, petulant, rather unhygienic vessels, of trying to delicately steer his undecided Slytherin charges away from the Death Eaters while avoiding the suspicions of the converted ones. A year of watching Potter throw away every gift his mother had given him through the spoiled, reckless behavior of his father, which was not new, and a year of coaching Malfoy on the best way to kill Dumbledore, which was.

Remus stopped by the dungeons one night while he was grading essays.

"I'm sorry to interrupt," he said.

"Not at all," Severus said. "Frankly, I was beginning to succumb to despair."

"Appalling work?"

"These children can only aspire to appalling." Severus reheated the teapot with a flick of his wand and _accioed_ a second cup.

"Albus asked me to stop by," Remus said, accepting the tea. "He has a task for me." He hesitated, and Severus made a politely encouraging noise. "He wants me to talk to the werewolves about joining our side, or at least not taking Voldemort's."

"Ah," Severus said.

Remus smiled faintly. "I thought you might have some advice about how to live undercover among bloodthirsty Dark Creatures."

"Learn to lie convincingly and assume each and every one of them will kill you for a stale biscuit," he said lightly, but true advice failed him.

"Ah."

"When do you go?"

"Tomorrow."

"Albus never did believe much in advance notice. I assume you will still want the Wolfsbane."

"Yes, more than ever," Remus said grimly.

They lapsed into silence.

"Well," Remus said finally.

Severus took a deep breath. "You must believe in your ends," he said, not meeting Remus's eyes. "If you begin to doubt, you will expose yourself."

"Thank you," Remus said. "For the tea."

**::**

Severus stumbled into the grayness with a muffled gasp. He pressed his hand against his shoulder, checking that the limb was there again, as though such things mattered in this place. For once, Black was not there.

He turned in a slow circle and saw nothing but the endless gray. Every angle looked the same, and with a shock of disorientation, he realized he could not tell which way he had come from, and which way led further into Death. Finally, he sat down and waited to see what would happen.

Eventually, a black speck appeared on the horizon and suddenly became Black, standing over him.

"Quidditch elbow acting up?" Black asked.

"What? No," Severus said, letting go of his arm and standing up. They stood a moment in awkward silence. "I suppose you know what foolishness Remus has been talked into."

"Yeah. Tell him to take care of himself."

"Tell him yourself. He can—he remembers."

Black opened his mouth and snapped it shut again, and Severus added in a dismissive tone, "I certainly won't act as a go-between in your ridiculous schoolboy romance."

"Well, then, get out of my afterlife, you useless prat," Black said, but the corners of his eyes were smiling.

**::**

Severus delivered the first month's supply of Wolfsbane to Remus as soon as he finished it, a few days before the full moon, in case something should go wrong before then.

They met at the Shrieking Shack. "For old times sake," Severus said dryly, after he cast the Concealment and Silencing spells.

Remus looked tired, and Severus thought there were a few more lines on his face, but Remus brushed it off. "It is necessary work," he said. "I am useful."

He looked worse the second month. Severus gave him flasks of Pepper Up and Dreamless Sleep, and he took them gratefully, shrinking them down to fit in his waistcoat pocket. In return, he gave his report for Dumbledore.

"It is necessary work," he said again, in the end, "but I don't know how well I am doing it."

Severus inclined his head, understanding.

When Severus finally turned to go, Remus took a deep breath. "Severus. We are—We have never been friends."

Severus turned back. "No," he agreed.

"But we have never been enemies, either."

Severus hesitated, but compared to Potter and Black. "No, I suppose not."

"These last months have taught me that there is a far greater gap than I realized between enemies and not friends, and I—" He took another deep breath. "I would that you stay with me tonight," he said, oddly formal.

Severus blinked, unsure of his meaning. Remus crossed the room, steps steadier and quicker as he got closer. He put one hand on Severus's chest, and stood on tip-toe to press their mouths together, swift and sweet and as oddly formal as his invitation.

"Black—" Severus said blankly, when Remus stepped back.

"Is still dead," he said. "And he would not begrudge me this. Please, I need—"

Severus kissed him. He understood this, too.

They Transfigured a bed out of dust and cobwebs, but neither could stay the night. In his own chambers, Severus dreamed of Remus's death, but it was just an ordinary nightmare. When he tried to reach through it for the grayness, it dissolved around him and he woke. He lay there and could not decide if he was relieved or disappointed.

**::**

The holidays had the same effect on Voldemort as they did on everyone else: they made him manic, short-tempered, and prone to inappropriate outbursts of Unforgivables.

It was harder to escape his attention, and when Severus finally broke through into the grayness, the wounds were still healing.

"You missed a spot," Black said, with a kind of horrified fascination.

Severus grunted and took a step forward, and for once Black didn't stop him. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the blankness, and the pain in his back faded.

Black brushed his fingers over the swath of new skin. "Much better." He left his hand there, warm and strong, and Severus didn't shrug off the touch. "You fight him so hard on this. Why isn't he more suspicious?"

"He is not interested in what is freely given, only what he can take by force. My resistance pleases him."

Time passed, and then the ache in his arm was suddenly quiet.

"Oh," he said dully.

"Hey," Black said. "Take a message to Remus for me."

"I told you—" Severus said, and Black kissed his open mouth. "—you can tell him yourself."

"But this is more fun," Black said, and Severus woke.

"Merlin!" Remus said, sitting back and blowing out a great breath. "You screamed, and then you wouldn't wake up."

"Sorry."

Remus rolled his eyes. "Severus, you can't go on like this. He will break you eventually, and then where will you be? Where will we all be?"

Severus was silent for a long moment. Finally, he said, "It will not go on like this. I will be able to prove my loyalty to Voldemort in a way that he will not question."

"How? No, don't tell me. When?"

Severus thought of the curse on Dumbledore's hand, and Draco's desperation. "Soon," he said. "Soon."

**::**

Dumbledore told him how Harry would destroy Voldemort on Easter. Severus wondered, in some tiny, unsurprised corner of his mind, whether that was intentional.

All this time, all his blood and sweat and suffering, to lead Harry like a lamb to the slaughter. It hurt something he had long thought cold and dead inside him.

When Voldemort came to him again, Severus wavered. He stared into those terrible, luminous eyes, and thought, _He would not kill Harry, if he knew the truth._

As if from a great distance, he heard Black scream his name, and he sighed and closed his eyes, and fell back towards the sound of his voice.

"Did you know?"

"Now, I do," Black said gently.

"And you..."

"I understand. And you will, too, eventually."

"Ah, yes, I have been told death makes things clearer," Severus said, bitter as wormwood. And then, "Is it so bad? Dying."

"No, not at all. Doesn't hurt a bit," Black said.

"You have always been a disgusting liar, Black," he said mildly.

"It may not be painless, but you won't remember it." He kissed Severus on the lips, solemn and sweet. "And I will be waiting on the other side. But, Severus, you must wake up, _now._"

Severus gasped and opened his eyes, and wished, sudden and sharp and pointless, that he had said a better goodbye to Remus.

Burning over Hogwarts was the Dark Mark.


End file.
